iiliiiiiiji"! 




11 



III 



ill 



■m 



■.SLAVERY TBACTS. No. i. ^,„ Series. 




n/>xtllESPONDENCE 



^^^X/M^I^I^ CHILD, 



^^Y pE AND MRS. MASON, 



OF VIRGINIA. 



NEW YORK: 



I shoi 
Browi 

^^GOpllSHED BY THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY. 
I llOlf 

ers. I 1800. 



Mono^rap)i 




\ 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



LETTEE TO GOV. WISE. 

Wayland, Mass., Oct. 26th, 1859. 

GoYERNOR Wise : I have heard that you were a man of 
chivalrous sentiments, and I know you were opposed to the 
iniquitous attempt to force upon Kansas a Constitution ab- 
horrent to the moral sense of her people. Relying upon 
these indications of honor and justice in your character, I 
venture to ask a favor of you. Enclosed is a letter to Capt. 
John Brown. Will you have the kindness, after reading it 
yourself, to transmit it to the prisoner ? 

I and all my large circle of abolition acquaintances were 
taken by surprise when news came of Capt. Brown's recent 
attempt; nor do I know of a single person who would have 
approved of it, had they been apprised of his intention. But 
I and thousands of others feel a natural impulse of sympathy 
for the brave and suiFering man. Perhaps God, who sees 
the inmost of our souls, perceives some such sentiment in 
your heart also. He needs a mother or sister to dress his 
womids, and speak soothingly to him. Will you allow me to 
perform that mission of humanity? If you will, may God 
bless you for the generous deed ! 

I have been for years an uncompromising Abolitionist, and 
I should scorn to deny it or apologize for it as much as John 
Brown himself would do. Believing in peace principles, I 
deeply regret the step that the old veteran has taken, wliilc 
I honor his humanity towards those who became his prison- 
ers. But because it is my habit to be as open as the daylight, 



4 LETTER OP GOV. WISE. 

I will also say, that if I believed our religion justified men in 
fighting for freedom, I should consider the enslaved every 
where as best entitled to that right. Such an avowal is a 
simple, frank expression of my sense of natural justice. 

But I should despise myself utterly if any circumstances 
could tempt me to seek to advance these opinions in any way, 
directly or indirectly, after your permission to visit Virginia 
has been obtained on the plea of sisterly sympathy with a 
brave and suffering man. I give you my word of honor, 
which was never broken, that I would use such permission 
solely and singly for the purpose of nursing your prisoner, 
and for no other purpose whatsoever. 

Yours, respectfully, 

L. MAEIA CHILD. 



EEPLY OF GOV. WISE. 

Richmond, Ya., Oct. 29th, 1859. 

Madam : Yours of the 26th was received by me yesterday, 
and at my earliest leisure I respectfully reply to it, that I 
will forward the letter for John Brown, a prisoner under our 
laws, arraigned at the bar of the Circuit Court for the cOunty 
of Jefferson, at Charlestown, Ya., for the crimes of murder, 
robbery and treason, which you ask me to transmit to him. 
I will comply with your request in the only way which seems 
to me proper, by enclosing it to the Commonwealth's attor- 
ney, with the request that he will ask the permission of the 
Court to hand it to the prisoner. Brown, the prisoner, is now 
in the hands of the judiciary, not of the executive, of this 
Commonwealth. 

You ask me, further, to allow you to perform the mission 
"of mother or sister, to dress his wounds, and speak sooth- 
ingly to him." By this, of course, you mean to be allowed 
to visit him in his cell, and to minister to him in the offices of 
humanity. Why should you not be so allowed. Madam? 
Yirginia and Massachusetts are involved in no civil war, and 



LETTER OF GOV. WISE. 5 

the Constitution which unites them in one confederacy guar- 
antees to you the privileges and immunities of a citizen of 
the United States in the State of Virginia. That Constitu- 
tion I am sworn to support, and am, therefore, bound to protect 
your privileges and immunities as a citizen of Massachusetts 
coming into Virginia for any lawful and peaceful purpose. 

Coniing, as you propose, to minister to the captive in prison, 
you will be met, doubtless, by all our people, not only in a 
chivalrous, but in a Christian spirit. You have the right to 
visit Charlestown, Va., Madam; and your mission being 
merciful and humane, will not only be allowed, but respected, 
if not welcomed. A few unenlightened and inconsiderate per- 
sons, fanatical in their modes of thought and action, to main- 
tain justice and right, might molest you, or be disposed to do 
so ; and this might suggest the imprudence of risking any ex- 
periment upon the peace of a society very much excited by 
the crimes with whose chief author you seem to sympathize 
so much. But still, I repeat, your motives and avowed pur- 
pose are lawful and peaceful, and I will, as far as I am con- 
cerned,^ do my duty in protecting your rights in our limits. 
Virginia and her authorities would be weak indeed — weak 
in point of folly, and weak in point of power — if her State 
faith and constitutional obligations cannot be redeemed in her 
own limits to the letter of morality as well as of law ; and if 
her chivalry cannot courteously receive a lady's visit to a 
prisoner, every arm which guards Brown from rescue on the 
one hand, and from lynch law on the other, will be ready to 
guard your person in Virginia. 

I could not permit an insult even to woman in her walk of 
charity among us, though it be to one who whetted knives of 
butchery for our mothers, sisters, daughters and babes. We 
have no sympathy with your sentiments of sympathy with 
Brown, and are surprised that you were " taken by surprise 
when news came of Capt. Brown's recent attempt." His at- 
tempt was a natural consequence of your sympathy, and the 
errors of that sympathy ought to make you doubt its virtue 
from the effect on his conduct. But it is not of this I should 
speak. " When you arrive at Charlestown, if you go there, it 
will be for the Court and its officers, the Commonwealth's 
attorney, sheriff and jailer, to say whether you may see and 
wait on the prisoner. But, whether you are thus permitted 



6 LETTER OP MRS. CHILD. 

or not, (and you will be, if my advice can prevail,) you may 
rest assured that he will be humanely, lawfully and mercifully 
dealt by in prison and on trial. 

Respectfully, 

HENRY A. WISE. 



MES. CHILD TO GOV. WISE. 

In your civil but very diplomatic reply to my letter, you 
inform me that I have a constitutional right to visit Virginia, 
for peaceful purposes, in common with every citizen of the 
United States. I was perfectly well aware that such was the 
theory of constitutional obligation in the Slave States ; but I 
was also aware of what you omit to mention, viz. ; that the 
Constitution has, in reality, been completely and systemati- 
cally nullified, whenever it suited the convenience or the policy 
of the Slave Power. Your constitutional obligation, for 
which you profess so much respect, has never proved any 
protection to citizens of the Free States, who happened to 
have a black, brown, or yellow complexion ; nor to any white 
citizen whom you even suspected of entertaining opinions op- 
posite to your own, on a question of vast importance to the 
temporal welfare and moral example of our common country. 
This total disregard of constitutional obligation has been man- 
ifested not merely by the Lynch Law of mobs in the Slave 
States, but by the deliberate action of magistrates and legis- 
lators. What regard was paid to constitutional obligation in 
South Carolina, when Massachusetts sent the Hon. Mr. Hoar 
there as an envoy, on a purely legal errand ? Mr. Hedrick, 
Professor of Political Economy in the University of North 
Carolina, had a constitutional right to reside in that State. 
What regard was paid to that right, when he was driven from 
his home, merely for declaring that he considered Slavery an 
impolitic system, injurious to the prosperity of States ? What 
respect for constitutional rights was manifested by Alabama, 
when a bookseller in Mobile was compelled to flee for his life, 
because he had, at the special request of some of the citizens, 
imported a few copies of a novel that every body was curious 



LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. 7 

to read ? Your own citizen, Mr. Underwood, had a constitu- 
tional right to live in Virginia, and vote for whomsoever he 
pleased. What regard was paid to his rights, when he was 
driven from your State for declaring himself in favor of the 
election of Fremont ? With these, and a multitude of other 
examples before your eyes, it would seem as if the less that 
was said about respect for constitutional obligations at the 
South, the better. Slavery is, in fact, an infringement of all 
law, and adheres to no law, save for its own purposes of op- 
pression. 

You accuse Captain John Brown of " whetting knives of 
butchery for the mothers, sisters, daughters and babes " of 
Yirginia ; and you inform me of the well-known fact that he 
is "arraigned for the crimes of murder, robbery and treason." 
I will not here stop to explain why I believe that old hero to 
be no criminal, but a martyr to righteous principles which he 
sought to advance by methods sanctioned by his own religious 
viC'VS, though not by mine. Allowing that Capt. Brown did 
attempt a scheme in which murder, robbery and treason were, 
to his own consciousness, involved, I do not see how Gov. 
Wise can consistently arraign him for crimes he has himself 
commended. You have threatened to trample on the Con- 
stitution, and break the Union, if a majority of the legal 
voters in these Confederated States dared to elect a President 
unfavorable to the extension of Slavery. Is not such a 
declaration proof of premeditated treason? In the Spring 
of 1842, you made a speech in Congress, from which I copy 
the following : — 

" Once set before the people of the Great Valley the conquest of the rich 
Mexican Provinces, and you might as well attempt to stop the wind. This 
Government might send its troops, but they would run over them like a 
herd of bufililo. Let the work once begin, and I do not know that this 
House would hold me very long. Give me five millions of dollars, and I 
would undertake to do it myself. Although I do not know how to set a 
single squadron in the field, I could find men to do it. Slavery should pour 
itself abroad, without restraint, and find no limit but the Southern Ocean. 
The Camanches should no longer hold the richest mines of Mexico. Every 
golden image which had received the profanation of a false worship, should 
soon be melted down into good American eagles. I would cause as much 
gold to cross the Eio del Norte as the mules of Mexico could carry ; aye, 
and I would make better use of it, too, than any lazy, bigoted priesthood 
under heaven." 

When you thus boasted that you and your " booted loafers" 
would overrun the troops of the United States "like a herd of 



8 LETTER OP MRS. CHILD. 

buffalo," if the Government sent them to arrest your invasion 
of a neighboring nation, at peace with the United States, did 
you not pledge yourself to commit treason ? Was it not by 
robbery, even of churches, that you proposed to load the mules 
of Mexico with gold for the United States? Was it not by 
the murder of unoffending Mexicans that you expected to 
advance those schemes of avarice and ambition ? What hu- 
manity had you for Mexican "mothers and babes," whom you 
proposed to make childless and fatherless? And for what 
purpose was this wholesale massacre to take place? Not to 
right the wrongs of any oppressed class; not to sustain any 
great principles of justice, or of freedom ; but merely to 
enable "Slavery to pour itself forth without restraint." 

Even if Captain Brown were as bad as you paint him, I 
should suppose he must naturally remind you of the words of 
Macbeth : 

" We but teach 
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return 
To plague the inventor : This even-handed justice 
Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice 
To our own lips." 

If Captain Brown intended, as you say, to commit treason, 
robbery and murder, I think I have shown that he could find 
ample authority for such proceedings in the public declara- 
tions of Gov. Wise. And if, as he himself declares, he merely 
intended to free the oppressed, where could he read a more 
forcible lesson than is furnished by the State Seal of Vir- 
ginia ? I looked at it thoughtfully before I opened your let- 
ter ; and though it had always appeared to me very sugges- 
tive, it never seemed to me so much so as it now did in con- 
nection with Captain John Brown. A liberty-loving hero 
stands with his foot upon a prostrate despot ; under his strong 
arm, manacles and chains lie broken ; and the motto is, " Sic 
Seinper Tyrannis ; " "Thus be it ever done to Tyrants." And 
this is the blazon of a State whose most profitable business is 
the Internal Slave-Trade ! — in whose highways cofiies of hu- 
man chatties, chained and manacled, are frequently seen! 
And the Seal and the Cofiies are both looked upon by other 
chattels, constantly exposed to the same fate ! What if some 
Vezoy, or Nat Turner, should be growing up among those 
apparently quiet spectators ? It is in no spirit of taunt or of 



LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. 9 

exultation that I ask this question. I never think of it but 
with anxiety, sadness, and sympathy. I know that a slave- 
holding community necessarily lives in the midst of gunpow- 
der; and, in this age, sparks of free thought are flying in 
every direction. You cannot quench the fires of free thought 
and human sympathy by any process of cunning or force ; but 
there is a method by which you can effectually wet the gun- 
powder. England has already tried it, with safety and suc- 
cess. Would that you could be persuaded to set aside the 
prejudices of education, and candidly examine the actual 
working of that experiment ! Virginia is so richly endowed 
by nature that Free Institutions alone are wanting to render 
her the most prosperous and powerful of the States. 

In your letter, you suggest that such a scheme as Captain 
Brown's is the natural result of the opinions with which I 
sympathize. Even if I thought this to be a correct statement, 
though I should deeply regret it, I could not draw the con- 
clusion that humanity ought to be stifled, and truth struck 
dumb, for fear that long-successful despotism might be en- 
dangered by their utterance. But the fact is, you mistake 
the source of that strange outbreak. No abolition arguments 
or denunciations, however earnestly, loudly, or harshly pro- 
claimed, would have produced that result. It was the legit- 
imate consequence of the continual and constantly-increasing 
aggressions of the Slave Power. The Slave States, in their 
desperate efforts to sustain a bad and dangerous institution, 
have encroached more and more upon the lilierties of the Free 
States. Our inherent love of law and order, and our super- 
stitious attachment to the Union, you have mistaken for cow- 
ardice ; and rarely have you let slip any opportunity to add 
insult to ao;o;ression. 

The manifested opposition to Slavery began with the lec- 
tures and pamphlets of a few disinterested men and women, 
who based their movements upon purely moral and religious 
grounds; but their expostulations were met with a storm of 
rage, with tar and feathers, brickbats, demolished houses, and 
other applications of Lynch Law. When the dust of the con- 
flict began to subside a little, their numbers were found to be 
greatly increased by the efforts to exterminate them. They 
had become an influence in the State too important to be over- 
looked by shrewd calculators. Political economists began to 



10 LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. 

look at the subject from a lower point of view. They used 
their abilities to demonstrate that slavery was a wasteful 
system, and that the Free States were taxed, to an enormous 
extent, to sustain an institution which, at heart, two-thirds of 
them abhorred. The forty millions, or more, of dollars, ex- 
pended in hunting Fugitive Slaves in Florida, under the name 
of the Seminole War, were adduced, as one item in proof, to 
which many more were added. At last, politicians were com- 
pelled to take some action on the subject. It soon became 
known to all the people that the Slave States had always 
managed to hold in their hands the political power of the 
Union, and that while they constituted only one-third of the 
white population of these States, they held more than two- 
thirds of all the lucrative, and once honorable offices; an 
indignity to which none but a subjugated people had ever 
before submitted. The knowledge also became generally 
diffused, that while the Southern States owned their Democ- 
racy at home, and voted for them, they also systematically 
bribed the nominally Democratic party, at the North, with 
the offices adroitly kept at their disposal. 

Through these, and other instrumentalities, the sentiments 
of the original Grarrisonian Abolitionists became very widely 
extended, in forms more or less diluted. But by far the most 
efficient co-laborers we have ever had have been the Slave 
States themselves. By denying us the sacred Right of Peti- 
tion, they roused the free spirit of the North, as it never 
could have been roused by the loud trumpet of Garrison, or 
the soul-animating bugle of Phillips. They bought the great 
slave, Daniel, and, according to their established usage, paid 
him no wages for his labor. By his cooperation, they forced 
the Fugitive Slave Law upon us, in violation of all our hu- 
mane instincts and all our principles of justice. And what 
did they procure for the Abolitionists by that despotic pro- 
cess ? A deeper and wider detestation of Slavery throughout 
the Free States, and the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin, an 
eloquent outburst of moral indignation, whose echoes wakened 
the world to look upon their shame. 

By fillibustering and fraud, they dismembered Mexico, and 
having thus obtained the soil of Texas, they tried to introduce 
it as a Slave State into the Union. Failing to effect their 
purpose by constitutional means, they accomplished it by a 



LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. 11 

most open and palpable violation of the Constitution, and by 
obtaining the votes of Senators on false pretences.* 

Soon afterward, a Southern Slave Administration ceded to 
the powerful monarchy of Great Britain several hundred 
thousands of square miles, that must have been made into 
Free States, to which that same Administration had declared 
that the United States had " an unquestionable right ; " and 
then they turned upon the weak Republic of Mexico, and, in 
order to make more Slave States, wrested from her twice as 
many hundred thousands of square miles, to which we had 
not a shadow of right. 

Notwithstanding all these extra efforts, they saw symptoms 
that the political power so long held with a firm grasp was in 
danger of slipping from their hands, by reason of the exten- 
sion of Abolition sentiments, and the greater prosperity of 
Free States. Emboldened by continual success in aggression, 
they made use of the pretence of " Squatter Sovereignty " to 
break the league into which they had formerly cajoled the 
servile representatives of our blinded people, by which all the 
territory of the United States south of 36° 30' was guaranteed 
to Slavery, and all north of it to Freedom. Thus Kansas be- 
came the battle-ground of the antagonistic elements in our 
Government. Ruffians hired by the Slave Power were sent 
thither temporarily, to do the voting, and drive from the polls 
the legal voters, who were often murdered in the process. 
Names, copied from the directories of cities in other States, 
were returned by thousands as legal voters in Kansas, in order 
to establish a Constitution abhorred by the people. This was 
their exemplification of Squatter Sovereignty. A Massachu- 
setts Senator, distinguished for candor, courtesy, and stainless 
integrity, was half murdered by slaveholders, merely for hav- 
ing the manliness to state these facts to the assembled Con- 
gress of the nation. Peaceful emigrants from the North, who 
went to Kansas for no other purpose than to till the soil, 
erect mills, and establish manufactories, schools, and churches, 
were robbed, outraged, and murdered. For many months, a 
war more ferocious than the warfare of wild Indians was car- 

* The following Senators, Mr. Niles, of Connecticut, Mr. Dix, of New 
York, and Mr. Tappan, of Ohio, published statements that their votes had 
been obtained by false representations ; and they declared that the caso 
was the same with Mr. Heywood, of North Carolina. 



12 LETTER OP MRS. CHILD. 

ried on against a people almost unresisting, because they re- 
lied upon the Central Government for aid. And all this 
while, the power of the United States, wielded by the Slave 
Oligarchy, was on the side of the aggressors. They literally 
tied the stones, and let loose the mad dogs. This was the 
state of things when the hero of Osawatomie and his brave 
sons went to the rescue. It was he who first turned the tide 
of Border-Ruffian triumph, by showing them that blows were 
to be taken as well as given. 

You may believe it or not, Gov. Wise, but it is certainly 
the truth that, because slaveholders so recklessly sowed the 
wind in Kansas, they reaped a whirlwind at Harper's Ferry. 

The people of the North had a very strong attachment to 
the Union ; but, by your desperate measures, you have weak- 
ened it beyond all power of restoration. They are not your 
enemies, as you suppose, but they cannot consent to be your 
tools for any ignoble task you may choose to propose. You 
must not judge of us by the crawling sinuosities of an Ever- 
ett ; or by our magnificent hound, whom you trained to hunt 
your poor cripples, and then sent him sneaking into a corner 
to die — not with shame for the base purposes to which his 
strength had been applied, but with vexation because you 
withheld from him the promised bone. Not by such as these 
must you judge the free, enlightened yeomanry of New Eng- 
land. A majority of them would rejoice to have the Slave 
States fulfil their oft-repeated threat of withdrawal from the 
Union. It has ceased to be a bugbear, for we begin to despair 
of being able, by any other process, to give the world the 
example of a real republic. The moral sense of these States 
is outraged by being accomplices in sustaining an institution 
vicious in all its aspects ; and it is now generally understood 
that we purchase our disgrace at great pecuniary expense. 
If you would only make the offer of a separation in serious 
earnest, you would hear the hearty response of millions, " Go, 
gentlemen, and 

' Stand not upon the order of your going, 
But go at once ! ' " 

Yours, with all due respect, 

L. MARIA CHILD. 



LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. 13 



EXPLANATORY LETTEE. 

To THE Editor of the New York Tribune : 

Sir : I was much surprised to see my correspondence with 
Governor Wise published in your cohimns. As I have never 
given any person a copy, I presume you must have obtained 
it from Virginia. My proposal to go and nurse that brave 
and generous old man, who so willingly gives his life a sacri- 
fice for God's oppressed poor, originated in a very simple and 
unmeritorious impulse of kindness. I heard his friends in- 
quiring, " Has he no wife, or sister, that can go to nurse 
him ? We are trying to ascertain, for he needs some one." 
My niece said she would go at once, if her health were strong 
enough to be trusted. I replied that my age and state of 
health rendered me a more suitable person to go, and that I 
would go most gladly. I accordingly wrote to Captain 
Brown, and enclosed the letter to Governor Wise. My in- 
tention was to slip away quietly, without having the affair 
made public. 1 packed my trunk and collected a quantity of 
old linen for lint, and awaited tidings from Virginia. When 
Governor Wise answered, he suggested the " imprudence of 
trying any experiment upon the peace of a society already 
greatly excited," &c. My husband and I took counsel 
together, and we both concluded that, as the noble old veteran 
was said to be fast recovering from his wounds, and as my 
presence might create a popular excitement unfavorable to 
such chance as the prisoner had for a fair trial, I had better 
wait until I received a reply from Captain Brown himself. 
Fearing to do him more harm than good by following my 
impulse, I waited for his own sanction. Meanwhile, his 
wife, said to be a brave-hearted Boman matron, worthy of 
such a mate, has gone to him, and I have received the fol- 
lowing reply. 

Bespectfully yours, 

L. MARIxi CHILD. 

Boston, Nov. 10, 1859. 



14 LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. 

MES. CHILD TO JOHN BEOWN. 

Wayland, Mass., Oct. 26, 1859. 

Dear Capt. Brown : Though personally unknown to you, 
you will recognize in my name an earnest friend of Kansas, 
when circumstances made that Territory the battle-ground 
between the antagonistic principles of slavery and freedom, 
which politicians so vainly strive to reconcile in the govern- 
ment of the United States. 

Believing in peace principles, I cannot sympathize with the 
method you chose to advance the cause of freedom. But I 
honor your generous intentions — I admire your courage, 
moral and physical. I reverence you for the humanity 
which tempered your zeal. I sympathize with you in your 
cruel bereavement, your sufferings, and your wrongs. In 
brief, I love you and bless you. 

Thousands of hearts are throbbing with sympathy as warm 
as mine. I think of you night and day, bleeding in prison, 
surrounded by hostile faces, sustained only by trust in God 
and your own strong heart. I long to nurse you — to speak 
to you sisterly words of sympathy and consolation. I have 
asked permission of Governor Wise to do so. If the request 
is not granted, I cherish the hope that these few words may 
at least reach your hands, and afford you some little solace. 
May you be strengthened by the conviction that no honest 
man ever sheds blood for freedom in vain, however much he 
may be mistaken in his efforts. May God sustain you, and 
carry you through whatsoever may be in store for you ! 

Yours, with heartfelt respect, sympathy and affection, 

L. MARIA CHILD. 



LETTER OF JOHN BROWN. 15 

EEPLY OF JOHN BEOAVN. 

Mrs. L. Maria Child : 

My Dear Friend — Such you prove to be, though a stran- 
ger — your most kind letter has reached me, with the kind 
offer to come here and take care of me. Allow me to express 
my gratitude for your great sympathy, and at the same time 
to propose to you a different course, together with my reasons 
for wishing it. I should certainly be greatly pleased to 
become personally acquainted with one so gifted and so kind, 
but I cannot avoid seeing some objections to it, under present 
circumstances. First, I am in charge of a most humane 
gentleman, who, with his family, has rendered me every pos- 
sible attention I have desired, or that could be of the least 
advantage; and I am so recovered of my wounds as no longer 
to require nursing. Then, again, it would subject you to 
great personal inconvenience and heavy expense, without 
doing me any good. Allow me to name to you another 
channel through which you may reach me with your sympa- 
thies much more effectually. I have at home a wife and three 
young daughters, the youngest but little over five years old, 
the oldest nearly sixteen. I have also two daughters-in-law, 
whose husbands have both fallen near me here. There is also 
another widow, Mrs. Thompson, whose husband fell here. 
Whether she is a mother or not, I cannot say. All these, 
my wife included, live at North Elba, Essex county, New 
York. I have a middle-aged son, who has been, in some 
degree, a cripple from his childhood, who would have as much 
as he could well do to earn a living. He was a most dread- 
ful sufferer in Kansas, and lost all he had laid up. He has 
not enough to clothe himself for the winter comfortably. I 
have no living son, or son-iu-law, who did not suffer terribly 
in Kansas. 

Now, dear friend, would you not as soon contribute fifty 
cents now, and a like sum yearly, for the relief of those very 
poor and deeply afflicted persons, to enable them to supply 
themselves and their children with bread and very plain cloth- 
ing, and to enable the children to receive a common English 
education ? Will you also devote your own energies to induce 



16 LETTER OF MRS. MASON. 

others to join yoii in giving a like amount, or any other 
amount, to constitute a little fund for the purpose named? 

I cannot see how your coming here can do me the least 
good ; and I am quite certain you can do immense good where 
you are. I am quite cheerful under all my afflicting circum- 
stances and prospects; having, as I humbly trust, "the peace 
of God which passeth all understanding " to rule in my heart. 
You may make such use of this as you see fit. God Almighty 
bless and reward you a thousand fold ! 

Yours in sincerity and truth, 

JOHN BROWN. 



LETTEE OE lES. lASON, 

Alto, King George's Co., Ya., Nov. 11th, 1859. 

Do you read your Bible, Mrs. Child? If you do, read 
there, "Woe unto you, hypocrites," and take to yourself 
with two-fold damnation that terrible sentence; for, rest 
assured, in the day of judgment it shall be more tolerable for 
those thus scathed by the awful denunciation of the Son of 
God, than for you. You would soothe with sisterly and 
motherly care the hoary-headed murderer of Harper's Ferry ! 
A man whose aim and intention was to incite the horrors of 
a servile war — to condemn women of your own race, ere 
death closed their eyes on their sufferings from violence and 
outrage, to see their husbands and fathers murdered, their 
children butchered, the ground strewed with the brains of 
their babes. The antecedents of Brown's band proved them 
to have been the offscourings of the earth ; and what would 
have been our fate had they found as many sympathizers in 
Yirginia as they seem to have in Massachusetts? 

Now, compare yourself with those your "sympathy " would 
devote to such ruthless ruin, and say, on that "word of honor, 
which never has been broken," would you stand by the bed- 
side of an old negro, dying of a hopeless disease, to alleviate 
his sufierings as far as human aid could? Have you ever 
watched the last, lingering illness of a consumptive, to soothe, 



LETTER OF MRS. MASON. 17 

as far as in you lay, the inevitable fate ? Do you soften the 
pangs of maternity in those around you by all the care and 
comfort you can give ? Do you grieve with those near you, 
even though their sorrows resulted from their own misconduct? 
Did you ever sit up until the "wee hours" to complete a 
dress for a motherless child, that she might appear on Christ- 
mas day in a new one, along with her more fortunate com- 
panions ? We do these and more for our servants, and why ? 
Because we endeavor to do our duty in that state of life it 
has pleased God to place us. In his revealed word we read 
our duties to them — theirs to us are there also — "Not only 
to the good and gentle, but to the froward." — (Peter 2 : 18.) 
Go thou and do likewise, and keep away from Charlestown. 
If the stories read in the public prints be true, of the suffer- 
ings of the poor of the North, you need not go far for objects 
of charity. " Thou hypocrite ! take first the beam out of 
thine own eye, then shalt thou see clearly to pull the mote out 
of thy neighbor's." But if, indeed, you do lack objects of 
sympathy near you, go to Jefferson county, to the family of 
George Turner, a noble, true-hearted man, whose devotion to 
his friend (Col. Washington) causing him to risk his life, was 
shot down like a dog. Or to that of old Beckham, whose 
grief at the murder of his negro subordinate made him need- 
lessly expose himself to the aim of the assassin Brown. And 
when you can equal in deeds of love and charity to those 
around you, what is shown by nine-tenths of the Virginia 
plantations, then by your "sympathy" whet the knives for 
our throats, and kindle the torch that fires our homes. You 
reverence Brown for his clemency to his prisoners ! Prison- 
ers ! and how taken ? Unsuspecting workmen, going to their 
daily duties; unarmed gentlemen, taken from their beds at 
the dead hour of the night, by six men doubly and trebly 
armed. Suppose he had hurt a hair of their heads, do you 
suppose one of the band of desperadoes would have left the 
engine-house alive ? And did he not know that his treatment 
of them was his only hope of life then, or of clemency after- 
ward? Of course he did. The United States troops could 
not have prevented him from being torn limb from limb. 

I will add, in conclusion, no Southerner ought, after your 
letter to Governor Wise and to Brown, to read a line of your 
composition, or to touch a magazine which bears your name 



18 LETTER OP MRS. CHILD. 

in its lists of contributors ; and in this we hope for the "sym- 
pathy," at least of those at the North who deserve the name 
of woman. 

M. J. C. MASON. 



EEPLY OF MES. CHILD. 



Wayland, Mass., Dec. 17th, 1859. 

Prolonged absence from home has prevented my answering 
your letter so soon as I intended. I have no disposition to 
retort upon you the " two-fold damnation" to which you con- 
sign me. On the contrary, I sincerely wish you well, both in 
this world and the next. If the anathema proved a safety 
valve to your own boiling spirit, it did some good to you, 
while it fell harmless upon me. Fortunately for all of us, 
the Heavenly Father rules His universe by laws, which the 
passions or the prejudices of mortals have no power to change. 

As for John Brown, his reputation may be safely trusted 
to the impartial pen of History; and his motives will be 
righteously judged by Him who knoweth the secrets of all 
hearts. Men, however great they may be, are of smail con- 
sequence in comparison with principles ; and the principle for 
which John Brown died is the question at issue between us. 

You refer me to the Bible, from which you quote the 
favorite text of slaveholders : — 

" Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good 
and gentle, but also to the froward." — 1 Peter, 2 : 18. 

Abolitionists also have favorite texts, to some of which I 
would call your attention: — 

" Remember those that are in bonds as bound with them." — Heb. 13 : 3. 

" Hide the outcasts. Bewray not him that wandereth. Let mine out- 
casts dwell with thee. Be thou a covert to them fx-om the face of the 
spoiler."— Isa. 16 : 3, 4. 

" Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped 
from his master unto thee. He shall dwell with thee where it liketh him 
best. Thou shalt not oppress him." — Deut. 23 : 15, 16. 

" Open thy mouth for the dumb, in the cause of all such as are appointed 



lETTER OF MRS. CHILD. 19 

to destruction. Open thy mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause 
of the poor and needy." — Prov. 29 : 8, 9. 

" Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show my 
people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins." — Isa. 58 : 1. 

I would especially commend to slaveholders the following 
portions of that volume, wherein you say God has revealed 
the duty of masters: — 

''Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal, knowing 
that ye also have a Master in heaven." — Col. 4 : 1. 

"Neither be ye called masters; for one is your master, even Christ; 
and all ye are brethren." — Matt. 23 : 8, 10. 

" Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto 
them."— Matt. 7 : 12. 

"Is not this the fast that I have chosen, to loose the hands of wicked- 
ness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that 
ye break every 3'oke ? " — Isa. 58 : 6. 

" They have given a boy for a harlot, and sold a girl for wine, that they 
might drink." — Joel 3:3. 

"He that oppresseth the poor, reproacheth his Maker." — Prov. 14 : 31. 

"Rob not the poor, because he is poor; neither oppress the afflicted. 
For the Lord will plead their cause, and spoil the soul of those who spoiled 
them."— Prov. 22 : 22, 23. 

" Woe unto him that useth his neighbor's service without wages, and 
giveth him not for his work." — Jer. 22 : 13. 

" Let him that stole, steal no more, but rather let him labor, working 
•with his hands." — Eph. 4 : 28. 

" Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write griev- 
ousn ess which they have prescribed; to turn aside the needy from judg- 
ment, and to take away the right from the poor, that widows may be their 
prey, and that they may rob the fatherless." — Isa. 10 : 1, 2. 

" If I did despise the cause of my man-servant or of my maid-servant, 
when they contend with me, what then shall I do when God riseth up? and 
when he risiteth, what shall I answer Him?" — Job 31 : 13, 14. 

" Thou hast sent widows away empty, and the arms of the fatherless have 
been broken. Therefore snares are round about thee, and sudden fear 
troubleth thee; and darkness, that thou canst not see." — Job 22 : 9, 10, 11. 

" J3ehold, the hire of your laborers, who have reaped down your fields, 
which is of you kept back by fraud, cricth ; and the cries of them which 
have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth. Ye have 
lived ia pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; yo have nourished your 
hearts as in a day of slaughter; ye have condemned and killed the just." 
— James 5 : 4. 

If the appropriateness of these texts is not apparent, I will 
try to make it so, by evidence drawn entirely from Southern 
sources. The Abolitionists are not such an ignorant set of 
fanatics as you suppose. They know whereof they affirm. 
They are fimiliar with the laws of the Slave States, which 
are alone sufficient to inspire abhorrence in any humane heart 



20 LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. 

or reflecting mind not perverted by the prejudices of education 
and custom. I might fill many letters with significant extracts 
from your statute-books ; but I have space only to glance at 
a few, which indicate the leading features of the system you 
cherish so tenaciously. 

The universal rule of the slave State is, that " the child 
follows the condition of its mother." This is an index to 
many things. Marriages between white and colored people 
are forbidden by law ; yet a very large number of the slaves 
are brown or yellow. When Lafayette visited this country in 
his old age, he said he was very much struck by the great 
change in the colored population of Virginia; that in the 
time of the Revolution, nearly all the household slaves were 
black, but when he returned to America, he found very few 
of them black. The advertisements in Southern newspapers 
often describe runaway slaves that " pass themselves for white 
men." Sometimes they are described as having " straight, 
light hair, blue eyes, and clear complexion." This could not 
be, unless their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers 
had been white men. But as their mothers were slaves, the 
law pronounces them slaves, subject to be sold on the auction- 
block whenever the necessities or convenience of their masters 
or mistresses require it. The sale of one's own children, 
brothers, or sisters, has an ugly aspect to those who are un- 
accustomed to it ; and, obviously, it cannot have a good moral 
influence, that law and custom should render licentiousness a 
profitable vice. 

Throughout the Slave States, the testimony of no colored 
person, bond or free, can be received against a white man. 
You have some laws, which, on the face of them, would seem 
to restrain inhuman men from murdering or mutilating slaves ; 
but they are rendered nearly null by the law T have cited. 
Any drunken master, overseer, or patrol, may go into the ne- 
gro cabins, and commit what outrages he pleases, with perfect 
impunity, if no white person is present who chooses to witness 
against him. North Carolina and Georgia leave a large loop- 
hole for escape, even if white persons are present, when mur- 
der is committed. A law to punish persons for " maliciously 
killing a slave" has this remarkable qualification : " Always 
provided that this act shall not extend to any slave dying of 
moderate correction." We at the North find it difficult to 



LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. 21 

understand how moderate punisliment can cause death. I 
have read several of your law books attentively, and I find no 
cases of punishment for the murder of a slave, except by fines 
paid to the owner, to indemnify him for the loss of his jirop- 
erty : the same as if his horse or cow had been killed. In 
the South Carolina Eeports is a case where the State had in- 
dicted Guy Raines for the murder of a slave named Isaac. 
It was proved that William Gray, the owner of Isaac, had 
given him a thousand lashes. The poor creature made his 
escape, but was caught, and delivered to the custody of Raines, 
to be carried to the county jail. Because he refused to go, 
Raines gave him five hundred lashes, and he died soon after. 
The counsel for Raines proposed that he should be allowed to 
acquit himself by his aion oath. The Court decided against 
it, because white witnesses had testified ; but the Court of 
Appeals afterward decided he ought to have been exculpated 
by his own oath, and he was acquitted. Small indeed is the 
chance for justice to a slave, when his own color are not al- 
lowed to testify, if they see him maimed or his children mur- 
dered; when he has slaveholders for Judges and Jurors; 
when the murderer can exculpate himself by his own oath ; 
and when the law provides that it is no murder to kill a slave 
by "moderate correction"! 

Your laws uniformly declare that "a slave shall be deemed 
a chattel personal in the hands of his owner, to all intents, 
constructions, and purposes whatsoever." This, of course, 
involves the right to sell his children, as if they were pigs ; 
also, to take his wife from him " for any intent or purpose 
whatsoever." Your laws also make it death for him to resist 
a white man, however brutally he may be treated, or however 
much his family may be outraged before his eyes. If he at- 
tempts to run away, your laws allow any man to shoot him. 

By your laws, all a slave's earnings belong to his master.^ 
He can neither receive donations nor transmit property. If 
his master allows him some hours to work for himself, and by 
great energy and perseverance he earns enough to buy his own 
bones and sinews, his master may make him pay two or three 
times over, and he has no redress. Three such cases have 
come within my own knowledge. Even a written promise 
from his master has no legal value, because a slave can make 
no contracts. 



22 LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. 

Your laws also systematically aim at keeping tlie minds of 
the colored people in the most abject state of ignorance. If 
■white people attempt to teach them to read or write, they are 
pmiished by imprisonment or fines ; if they attempt to teach 
each other, they are punished with from twenty to thirty-nine 
lashes each. It cannot be said that the anti-slavery agitation 
produced such laws, for they date much further back ; many 
of them when we were Provinces. They are the necessities 
of the system, which, being itself an outrage upon human na- 
ture, can be sustained only by perpetual outrages. 

The next reliable source of information is the advertise- 
ments in the Southern papers. In the North Carolina 
(Raleigh) Standard, Mr. Micajah Kicks advertises, " Run- 
away, a negro wom an and her two children. A few days before 
she went olF, I burned her with a hot iron on the left side of 
her face. I tried to make the letter M." In the Natchez 
Courier, Mr. J. P. Ashford advertises a runaway negro girl, 
with " a good many teeth missing, and the letter A branded 
on her cheek and forehead." In the Lexington (Ky.) Obser- 
ver, Mr. William Overstreet advertises a runaway negro with 
" his left eye out, scars from a dirk on his left arm, and much 
scarred with the whip." I might quote from hundreds of 
such advertisements, offering rewards for runaways, " dead or 
alive," and describing them with " ears cut off," "jaws brok- 
en," " scarred by rifle-balls," &c. 

Another source of information is afforded by your " Fugi- 
tives from Injustice," with many of whom I have conversed 
freely. I have seen scars of the whip and marks of the brand- 
ing-iron, and I have listened to their heart-breaking sobs, 
while they told of "piccaninnies" torn from their arms and 
sold. 

Another source of information is furnished by emancipated 
slaveholders. Sarah M. Grrimke, daughter of the late Judge 
Grimke, of the Supreme Court of South Carolina, testifies as 
follows : " As I left my native State on account of Slavery, 
and deserted the home of my fathers to escape the sound of 
the lash and the shrieks of tortured victims, I would gladly 
bury in oblivion the recollection of those scenes with which I 
have been familiar. But this cannot be. They come over 
my memory like gory spectres, and implore me, with resist- 
less power, in the name of a God of mercy, in the name of a 



LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. 



23 



crucified Saviour, in the name of humanity, for the sake of 
the slaveholder, as well as the slave, to bear witness to the 
horrors of the Southern prison-house." She proceeds to de- 
scribe dreadful tragedies, the actors in which she says were 
"men and women of the first families in South Carolina ; " 
and that their cruelties did not, in the slightest degree, aficct 
their standing in society. Her sister, Angelina Grimke, de- 
clared: "While I live, and Slavery lives, I must testify 
against it. Not merely for the sake of my poor brothers and 
sisters in bonds ; for even were Slavery no curse to its victims, 
the exercise of arbitrary power works such fearful ruin upon 
the hearts of slaveholders, that I should feel impelled to labor 
and pray for its overthrow with my latest breath." Among 
the horrible barbarities she enumerates is the case of a girl 
thirteen years old, who was flogged to death by her master. 
She says : " I asked a prominent lawyer, who belonged to one 
of the first families in the State, whether the murderer of this 
helpless child could not be indicted, and he coolly replied that 

the slave was Mr. 's property, and if he chose to su0"er 

the loss, no one else had any thing to do with it." She pro- 
ceeds to say : " I felt there could be for me no rest in the 
midst of such outrages and pollutions. Yet I saw nothing of 
Slavery in its most vulgar and repulsive forms. 1 saw it in 
the city, among the fashionable and the honorable, where it 
was garnished by refinement and decked out for show. It is 
my deep, solemn, deliberate conviction, that this is a cause 
worth dying for. I say so from what I have seen, and heard, 
and known, in a land of Slavery, whereon rest the darkness 
of Egypt and the sin of Sodom." I once asked Miss Ange- 
lina if she thought Abolitionists exaggerated the horrors of 
Slavery. She replied, with earnest emphasis : " They cannot 
be exaggerated. It is impossible for imagination to go beyond 
the facts." To a lady who observed that the time had not yet 
come for agitating the subject, she answered : " I apprehend 
if thou wert a slave, toiling in the fields of Carolina, thou 
wouldst think the time had fully come." 

Mr. Thome, of Kentucky, in the course of his eloquent lec- 
tures on this subject, said : " I breathed my first breath in an 
atmosphere of Slavery. But though I am heir to a slave in- 
heritance, I am bold to denounce the whole system as an out- 
rage, a complication of crimes, and wrongs, and cruelties, 
that make angels weep." 



24 LETTER OP MRS. CHILD. 

Mr. Allen, of Alabama, in a discussion witli tlie students 
at Lane Seminary, in 1834, told of a slave who was tied up 
and beaten all day, with a paddle full of holes. " At night, 
his flesh was literally pounded to a jelly. The punishment 
was inflicted within hearing of the Academy and the Public 
Grreen. But no one took any notice of it. No one thought 
any wrong was done. At our house, it is so common to hear 
screams from a neighboring plantation, that we think nothing 
of it. Lest any one should think that the slaves are generally 
well treated, and that the cases I have mentioned are excep- 
tions, let me be distinctly understood that cruelty is the rulsy 
and kindness is the exception." 

In the same discussion, a student from Virginia, after re- 
lating cases of great cruelty, said : " Such things are common 
all over Virginia ; at least, so far as I am acquainted. But 
the planters generally avoid punishing their slaves before 
straiigers.^'' 

Miss Mattie Griffith, of Kentucky, whose entire property 
consisted in slaves, emancipated them all. The noble-hearted 
girl wrote to me : "I shall go forth into the world penniless ; 
but I shall work with a light heart, and, best of all, I shall 
live with an easy conscience." Previous to this generous 
resolution, she had never read any Abolition document, and 
entertained the common Southern prejudice against them. 
But her own observation so deeply impressed her with the 
enormities of Slavery, that she was impelled to publish a book, 
called " The Autobiography of a Female Slave." I read it 
with thrilling interest; but some of the scenes made my 
nerves quiver so painfully, that I told her I hoped they were 
too highly colored. She shook her head sadly, and replied : 
" I am sorry to say that every incident in the book has come 
within my own knowledge." 

St. George Tucker, Judge and Professor of Law in Vir- 
ginia, speaking of the legalized murder of runaways, said : 
" Such are the cruelties to which a state of Slavery gives 
birth — such the horrors to which the human mind is capable 
of being reconciled by its adoption." Alluding to our strug- 
gle in '76, he said: "While we proclaimed our resolution to 
live free or die, we imposed on our fellow-men, of diiferent 
complexion, a Slavery ten thousand times worse than the ut- 
most extremity of the oj)pressions of which we complained." 



LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. 25 

Governor Giles, in a Message to the Legislature of Vir- 
ginia, referring to the custom of selling free colored people 
into Slavery, as a punishment for offences not capital, said : 
" Slavery must be admitted to be a punishment of the hiyJtest 
order ; and, according to the just rule for the apportionment 
of punishment to crimes, it ought to be applied only to crimes 
of the highest order. The most distressing reflection in the 
application of this punishment to female offenders is, that it 
extends to their offspring ; and the innocent are thus punished 
with the guilty." Yet one hundred and twenty thousand in- 
nocent babes in this country are annually subjected to a pun- 
ishment which your Governor declared " ought to be applied 
only to crimes of the highest order." 

Jefferson said : " One day of American Slavery is worse 
than a thousand years of that which we rose in arms to op- 
pose." Alluding to insurrections, he said : " The Almighty 
has no attribute that can take side with us in such a contest." 

John Randolph declared : " Every planter is a sentinel at 
his own door. Every Southern mother, when she hears an 
alarm of fire in the night, instinctively presses her infant 
closer to her bosom." 

Looking at the system of slavery in the light of all this 
evidence, do you candidly think we deserve " two-fold damna- 
tion" for detesting it? Can you not believe that we may 
hate the system, and yet be truly your friends? I make 
allowance for the excited state of your mind, and for the 
prejudices induced by education. I do not care to change 
your opinion of me ; but I do wish you could be persuaded to 
examine this subject dispassionately, for the sake of the pros- 
perity of Virginia, and the welfire of unborn generations, 
both white and colored. For thirty years. Abolitionists have 
been trying to reason with slaveholders, through the press, 
and in the halls of Congress. Their efforts, though directed 
to the masters only, have been met with violence and abuse 
almost equal to that poured on the head of John Brown. Yet 
surely we, as a portion of the Union, involved in the expense, 
the degeneracy, the danger, and the disgrace, of this iniquitous 
and fatal system, have a riyht to speak about it, and a right 
to be heard also. At the North, we willingl}^ publish pro- 
slavery arguments, and ask only a fair field and no favor for 
the other side. But you will not even allow your own citi- 



26 LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. 

zens a chance to examine this important subject. Your let- 
ter to me is published in Northern papers, as well as South- 
ern ; but my reply will not be allowed to appear in any 
Southern paper. The despotic measures you take to silence 
investigation, and shut out the light from your own white 
population, prove how little reliance you have on the strength 
of your cause. In this enlightened age, all despotisms ought 
to come to an end by the agency of moral and rational means. 
33ut if they resist such agencies, it is in the order of Provi- 
dence that they must come to an end by violence. History 
is full of such lessons. 

Would that the veil of prejudice could be removed from 
your eyes. If you would candidly examine the statements of 
Governor Hiucks of the British West Indies, and of the Rev. 
Mr. Bleby, long time a Missionary in those Islands, both be- 
fore and after emancipation, you could not fail to be convinced 
that Cash is a more powerful incentive to labor than the Lash, 
and far safer also. One fact in relation to those Islands is 
very significant. While the working people were slaves, it 
was always necessary to order out the military during the 
Christmas holidays ; but, since emancipation, not a soldier is 
to be seen. A hundred John Browns might land there, with- 
out exciting the slightest alarm. 

To the personal questions you ask me, I will reply in the 
name of all the women of New England. It would be ex- 
tremely difficult to find any woman in our villages who 
does not sew for the poor, and watch with the sick, whenever 
occasion requires. We pay our domestics generous wages, 
with which they can purchase as many Christmas gowns as 
they please ; a process far better for their characters, as well 
as our own, than to receive their clothing as a charity, after 
being deprived of just payment for their labor. I have never 
known an instance where the " pangs of maternity" did not 
meet with requisite assistance ; and here at the North, after 
we have helped the mothers, we do not sell the babies. 

I readily believe what you state concerning the kindness of 
many Virginia matrons. It is creditable to their hearts : but 
after all, the best that can be done in that way is a poor 
equivalent for the perpetual wrong done to the slaves, and the 
terrible liabilities to which they are always subject. Kind 
masters and mistresses among you are merely lucky accidents. 



LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. 27 

If any one chooses to be a brutal despot, your laws and cus- 
toms give him complete power to do so. And the lot of those 
slaves who have the kindest masters is exceedingly precarious. 
In case of death, or pecuniary difficulties, or marriages in the 
family, they may at any time be suddenly transferred from 
protection and indulgence to personal degradation, or extreme 
severity ; and if they should try to escape from such suffer- 
ings, any body is authorized to shoot them down like dogs. 

With regard to your declaration that " no Southerner ought 
henceforth to read a line of my composition," I reply that I 
have great satisfaction in the consciousness of having nothing 
to lose in that quarter. Twenty-seven years ago, I published 
a book called " An Appeal in behalf of that class of Ameri- 
cans called Africans." It influenced the minds of several 
young men, afterward conspicuous in public life, through 
whose agency the cause was better served than it could have 
been by me. From that time to this, I have labored too 
earnestly for the slave to be agreeable to slaveholders. Lite- 
rary popularity was never a paramount object with me, even 
in my youth ; and, now that I am old, I am utterly indiffer- 
ent to it. But, if I cared for the exclusion you threaten, I 
should at least have the consolation of being exiled with hon- 
orable company. Dr. Channing's writings, mild and candid 
as they are, breathe what you would call arrant treason. 
William C. Bryant, in his capacity of editor, is openly on 
our side. The inspired muse of Whittier has incessantly 
sounded the trumpet for moral warfare with your iniquitous 
institution ; and his stirring tones have been answered, more 
or less loudly, by Pierpont, Lowell, and Longfellow. Emer- 
son, the Plato of America, leaves the scholastic seclusion he 
loves so well, and, disliking noise with all his poetic soul, 
bravely takes his stand among the trumpeters. George W. 
Curtis, the brilliant writer, the eloquent lecturer, the elegant 
man of the world, lays the wealth of his talent on the altar 
of Freedom, and makes common cause with rough-shod re- 
formers. 

The genius of Mrs. Stowe carried the outworks of your in- 
stitution at one dash, and left the citadel open to besiegers, 
who are pouring in amain. In the church, on the ultra-liberal 
side, it is assailed by the powerful battering-ram of Theodore 
Parker's eloquence. On the extreme orthodox side is set a 



28 LETTER OF MRS. CHILD. 

huge fire, kindled by the burning words of Dr. Cheever. 
Between them is Henry Ward Beecher, sending a shower of 
keen arrows into your entrenchments ; and with him ride a 
troop of sharp-shooters from all sects. If you turn to the 
literature of England or France, you will find your institution 
treated with as little favor. The fact is, the whole civilized 
world proclaims Slavery an outlaw, and the best intellect of 
the age is active in hunting it down. 

L. MARIA CHILD. 



THE TOUCHSTONE. 

BY WILLIAM ALLINGHAME. 

A man there came, whence none could tell, 

Bearing a touchstone in his hand, 

And tested all things in the land 
By its unerring spell. 

A thousand transformations rose, 

From fair to foul^ from foul to fair ; i 

The golden crown he did not share, ^^ vJ 

Nor scorn the beggar's clothes. 'L. 

Of heirloom jewels, prized so much, 

Were many changed to chips and clods, 

And even statues of the gods 
Crumbled beneath its touch. 

Then angrily the people cried, 

" The loss outweighs the profit far, 

Our goods suffice us as they are, 
"We will not have them tried." 

But since they could not so avail 

To check his unrelenting quest. 

They seized him, saying, " Let him test 
How real is our jail," 

But though they slew him with their swords, 

And in the fire the touchstone burned, 

Its doings could not be o'erturned, 
Its undoings restored. 

And when, to stop all future harm. 

They strewed his ashes to the breeze. 

They little guessed each grain of these 
Conveyed the perfect charm. 



